The last time I was in New Orleans was during the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico when the city was still also reeling from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Now it seems to have recovered from these traumas. The restaurants are packed and the picturesque French Quarter, the old heart of the city, throbs to the sound of jazz music in streets blazing with neon lights and crowded with excited fun-seekers.
But things are hardly perfect. The city has one of the highest crime rates in America — well over 100 murders already this year — and even in the Garden District, the city’s most expensive area, full of gracious Victorian villas, the pavements are in such disrepair that they are perilous to walk on. The hostess with whom I have been staying has her arm in a sling after breaking her elbow in a fall. The city council is strapped for cash and cannot afford to re-lay the paving stones that have been forced up from the ground at jagged angles by the swelling roots of the evergreen oak trees.
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